Step Trackers

I bet we all have a step tracker app downloaded or even added here in MyFitnessPal, but how accurate are they? Can they really measure and approximate how many calories you've burned and how many km you've walked/ran? If so, what is the best step tracker app?

Replies

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,717 Member
    We don't all have one synched here. I own & use one - a moderately complicated fitness tracker, not just a step tracker (Garmin Vivoactive 3) - but don't synch it.

    The important thing to realize is that they are giving you a calorie estimate, not a calorie measurement. As such, they're based on statistical models, which themselves are based on population research. The more average you are, the more accurate their estimates will be. Because of the statistical nature of these particular data, they'll estimate pretty well for most people, a bit off for a few (high or low), and way off for a very, very few.

    If MFP is close on calorie estimates for you (or other TDEE calculators are), then there's a reasonable chance that a tracker of some sort will be fairly close for you, too.

    Depending on the model, they make measurements of certain things (like arm movement or stride impact, altitude, speed/distance via GPS, heart rate, and that sort of thing). You typically tell them demographic data (age, weight, height, etc. They combine those measurement will statistics for your demographic, and produce more personalized calorie estimates. But they're still estimates.

    I don't synch mine because I'm one of the rather rare people for whom the estimate is pretty inaccurate (as compared with 5+ years of careful MFP logging data). But synching them works very well for large numbers of people.

    If you're wondering why I bother with a tracker that gives inaccurate calorie estimates for me: I didn't buy it for calorie estimates; I bought it primarily for health and athletic stats: It seems to work pretty well for those, so I'm a satisfied user. The exercise calories are close enough to be useful to me for logging purposes, but the all-day calorie burn estimates are just silly low for me.